Mitt gets personal

APOPKA, Fla. — It took six years of running for president, but Mitt Romney has realized one month before the 2012 election that he cannot depend on family and surrogates to humanize him.

He must do it himself.

Story Continued Below

The Republican is using a three-day Florida swing to make a direct emotional appeal to voters. He is for the first time speaking more candidly to voters about his good deeds on behalf of others, a trait he has stubbornly shied away from during the majority of this campaign even as Democrats have painted him as an unfeeling corporate raider.

Starting on Friday night, Romney devoted nearly one-third of his stump speech to telling three revealing and personal stories that have been related before by other Romney allies — his wife, his friends — but never by himself.

It’s a dramatic, and seemingly intentional shift for the Republican, who until now had avoided such personal sharing in favor of portraying himself as a competent economic manager.

The GOP nominee is looking to build momentum from Wednesday’s first presidential debate by trying to do the one thing he hasn’t succeeded at for the entire campaign — convincing voters he is a regular guy to whom they can relate. But impressions of him as heartless have cemented in the minds of many voters — who want a president who feels at least a little of their pain — so it may be too little too late.

One of the stories references Romney’s religion in a prominent way, something he has generally avoided. He spoke of ministering to 14-year-old leukemia patient David Oparowski as “Brother Romney”when David questioned him about the afterlife (although the “Brother Romney” reference was dropped in the second telling).

The campaign has also been playing the biographical video from the Republican National Convention in Tampa that features home video from the Romneys’ private life.

“If you really want to know how a person will operate, look at how they’ve lived their life,” Ann Romney says in the video. “I trust Mitt. I trust him with my life.”

The campaign realized that it had made a mistake playing the video before prime-time during the convention so that they could show Clint Eastwood’s monologue to an empty chair. They’ve begun playing it on big Jumbotrons set up at some Romney rallies, including here on Saturday night.

At this rally outside Orlando, Romney auditioned to be healer in chief.

He recalled seeing a friend from graduate school, Billy Hulse, at an event in Atlanta a few weeks ago. After an accident paralyzed him, Hulse devoted himself to supporting medical research. The governor said that when he saw Hulse, he leaned into his friend’s wheelchair, put his arm on Hulse’s shoulder and whispered into his ear.